The difference between physics and metaphysics. . . is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioners of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory. (Carl Sagan)
Q: Science or metaphysics?
“In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis
"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be." Carl Sagan
The human mind, being created, has understandable uneasiness about the Uncreated. We do not find it comfortable to allow for the presence of One who is wholly outside of the circle of our familiar knowledge. We tend to be disquieted by the thought of One who does not account for His being, who is responsible to no one, who is self existent, self dependent, and self sufficient.
Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being that they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know, but that is quite another thing from admitting that there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering. To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be missed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries: this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess, so we save face by thinking God down to our level, or at least down to where we can manage Him. Yet how he eludes us; For He is everywhere while He is nowhere, for “where” has to do with matter and space, and God is independent of both. He is unaffected by time or motion, is wholly self dependent and owes nothing to the world His hands have made.
(Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy. from the chapter “The self existence of God.”)
"All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive."
- G.K. Chesterton (The Thing. CW. III 191)
Limits of Science:
Scientific theory is a powerful way to know nature, but there are limitations to the kinds of questions it can answer. These limits are set by science’s requirements that hypotheses be testable and falsifiable and that observations and experimental results be repeatable.
Observations that can’t be verified may be interesting or even entertaining, but they can not count as evidence in scientific inquiry. The headlines of supermarket tabloids would have you believe the humans are occasionally born with the head of a dog and that some of your classmates are extraterrestrials. The unconfirmed eyewitness accounts and computer-rigged photos are amusing but unconvincing. In science, evidence from observations and experiments is only convincing if it stands up the criterion of repeatability. The scientist who investigated snake mimicry in the Carolinas obtained similar dates when they repeated their experiments with different species of coral snakes and kind snakes in Arizona. And you should be able to obtain similar results if you were to repeat the snake experiments.
Ultimately, the limitations s of science are imposed by its naturalism—its seeking natural causes for natural phenomena. Science can neither support nor falsify hypotheses that angels, ghosts, or sprits, both benevolent and evil, cause storms, rainbows, illnesses, and cures. Such supernatural explanations are simply outside the bounds of science. (AP edition, Biology seventh edition, Campbell, Reece p 24)
(Get background)
If there is “truth” in science, it is conditional, based on the preponderance of available evidence. (Ibid. P 24)
Central Theme: Evolution, biology’s core theme, explains both the unity and diversity of life. The Darwinian theory of natural selection accounts for adaptation of populations to their environments through the differential reproductive success of varying individuals. P27
At its core, science is empiricism….
Science cannot know the ultimate nature of things.
Science cannot know the origin of things
Science cannot fathom past process
Science cannot predict the future with certainty
Science cannot control all possible forces
Science cannot know the reason “Why?”
Science cannot say what “ought” to be.
(David Breese, Seven Men who Rule the World from their Grave. Pg 40-43)
Although no model of origins can be scientifically tested – since one cannot repeat history – any such model can be used to predict and correlate the observable data which result from that history. (Morris/Gish Battle for Creation V2 p188)
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Bertrand Russell
British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)
As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
Noam Chomsky, in a television interview
US activist & linguist (1928 - )
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle
Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I a doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or deciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer to this… The point is that there is no scientific answer. Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse as quoted by Lee Strobel in the Case for the Creator p247. (can a Darwinian be a Christian (Cambridge University Press p 73)
The laws of physics, I understand, decree that when one billiard b all (A) sets another billiard ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A exactly equals the momentum gained by B. This is a law.
That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiard balls must conform. Provided of course, that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that. But a man with a cue would send us back to free will, so let us assume that it was lying on a table in a liner and that what set it in motion was a lurch of the ship. In that case it was not the law which produced the movement; it was a wave. And that wave, though it certainly moved according to the laws of physics, was not moved by them. It was shoved by other waves, and by winds, and so forth. And however far you traced the story back you would never find Laws of Nature causing anything.
The dazzling obvious conclusion now arose in my mind: in the whole history of the universe the Laws of Nature have never produced a single event……The laws are the pattern to which events conform: the source of events must be sought elsewhere. This may be put in the form that the Laws of Nature explain everything but the source of events. But this is a rather formidable exception. The laws, in one sense, cover the whole of reality except—well, except that continuous cataract of real events which makes up the actual universe. They explain everything except what we should ordinarily call “everything.”
C.S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle. (Ballantine Books, paperback 1970, pgs 52,53)
In the origins debate, if we carefully and strictly limit the discussion to that which can be scientifically, empirically proven - and not just anecdotal historical evidence - then both sides have astonishingly, precious little to present.
Seriously, whether you talk to a creationist or an evolutionist or anyone in between, 99% of their arguments are anecdotal, not genuinely empirical and scientific (though they still may be logical). And some of the best logical arguments available are inductive, not deductive. So maybe it belongs in a history or philosophy class.
What does belong in a science class is a careful analysis of what is empirical vs. what is anecdotal - a truly skeptical survey of all the evidence, showing that nearly all of it is anecdotal would be quite surprising for most students.
Skepticism cuts both ways, you know. I’m very much aware of the James Randi types and the skeptics who charge that all religious claims are based on anecdotal evidence and cannot be proven. Having done some research on this myself I think there is some empirical evidence for the supernatural. However the same skeptics are loathe to admit that most if not all of their positions in the origins debate are also based on… anecdotal evidence. (Comments by Perry Marsahll on his a comments forum on his website: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/einsteins-big-blunder/)
What if its True? Barry Arrington
Today, for the sake of argument only, let us make two assumptions:
1. First, let us assume that the design hypothesis is correct, i.e., that living things appear to be designed for a purpose because they were in fact designed for a purpose.
2. Second, let us assume that the design hypothesis is not a scientific hypothesis, which means that ID proponents are not engaged in a scientific endeavor, or, as our opponents so often say, “ID is not science.”
From these assumptions, the following conclusion follows: If the design hypothesis is correct and at the same time the design hypothesis may not be advanced as a valid scientific hypothesis, then the structure of science prohibits it from discovering the truth about the origin of living things, and no matter how long and hard researchers operating within the confines of the scientific method work, they will forever fail to find the truth about the matter.
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Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says:
“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle - something you have to assume but cannot prove.”
Application:
Here’s what it means:
- Faith and Reason are not enemies. In fact, the exact opposite is true! One is absolutely necessary for the other to exist. All reasoning ultimately traces back to faith in something that you cannot prove.
- All closed systems depend on something outside the system.
- You can always draw a bigger circle but there will still be something outside the circle.
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/
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Phillip Johnson essay on the need for humility in Science:
http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9602/johnson.html
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